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The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#61

Post by nathancahill »

keane wrote: post #2

The quality of full screen takeover pages seems to have dramatically risen recently. My family members, who don’t know the Escape key exists, accidentally click one from a banner ad every week now taking them to a page like examplefoobar38561.cloudfront.net and the use of elements that imitate browser or OS chrome (generally imitating Windows Defender or similar) has reached near perfection. All browsers should have…

Full screen still requires a direct user action. So there should still be a step/click between the banner ad and the takeover. But wow.

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#62

Post by clemailacct1 »

7moritz7 wrote: post #40
d11z wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been great for gambling, cybercrime, and enabling the drug trade practically since its inception.

I really think Monero in particular deserves way more criticism for their practice. Bitcoin is one thing, Monero is created for and marketed towards cybercriminals, you don't need to be a communications expert to get that premise. I haven't seen it used once for any legitimate purpose. Atleast with Bitcoin and Ethereum you can get buy some legitimate things like VPNs or NFTs https://arstechnica.com/information-techno…

Monero was built and used for privacy purposes but it gets abused by cybercriminals for malicious purposes. Just like all cryptocurrencies and even plain paper cash.

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#63

Post by xcdzvyn »

7moritz7 wrote: post #40
d11z wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been great for gambling, cybercrime, and enabling the drug trade practically since its inception.

I really think Monero in particular deserves way more criticism for their practice. Bitcoin is one thing, Monero is created for and marketed towards cybercriminals, you don't need to be a communications expert to get that premise. I haven't seen it used once for any legitimate purpose. Atleast with Bitcoin and Ethereum you can get buy some legitimate things like VPNs or NFTs https://arstechnica.com/information-techno…

You could say exactly the same thing about any form of encryption.

I haven't bought much with Monero, but I always offer it because I adore the premise. I personally think its great, one of the few truly valuable cryptocurrencies.

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#64

Post by Arch485 »

yardstick wrote: post #15
josteink wrote: post #14

I guess someone finally found a real world use for blockchain. Too bad it was malware.

Ironic that even this blockchain still had some centralised aspects: “In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) said its team is aware of the malware abusing its blockchain, and is actively addressing the issue. The company said all addresses associated with the spread of the malware have been blacklisted, and that its technicians had developed a model to detect future smart contracts t…

IIRC blacklisting in this manner is basically just a suggestion - it's saying, "hey, in the opinion of Binance, these adresses are bad. Don't do business with them".

If the majority of nodes in the network comply with the blacklist, then it works. But at any point, someone who runs a node (or nodes) can choose to ignore the blacklist.

It's only centralized if the majority of people running BNB Smart Chain decide to trust Binance.

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#66

Post by Tokumei-no-hito »

bigyikes wrote: post #38

> The company said all addresses associated with the spread of the malware have been blacklisted How does this work? Can a single entity really just blacklist certain addresses? How is this decentralized?

there's a difference between decentralized transactions and centralized APIs for viewing on-chain data.

a decentralized blockchain cannot block an address from sending or receiving transactions (without a hard fork - like ethereum did some years ago).

however, centralized services (like binancd) run nodes which read and publish on-chain data (transactions and data, like malware, associated with them) through regular HTTP APIs.

anyone running an API can choose to not allow access to data associated with certain addresses. it's their API and they can do what they want with it. the same way the youtube (insert platform) API could decide to block queries for certain channels or topics.

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#67

Post by yetanotherloss »

gumby wrote: post #43
warkdarrior wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the following blog post, it uses a web API exposed by the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) platform: https://labs.guard.io/etherhiding-hiding-web2-malicious-code... This diagram show the full flow of the attack: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*by4... Because reads from blockchain are "free" (meaning, there is no cryptocurrency payment required to read data from the smart contracts on BS…

Sounds like we should poison this vector (and IPFS) by uploading copyrighted movie torrents to this free storage system. For a change we’d be doing good.

Comically I was experimenting on this in 2013 or so and came to the conclusion it wasn't worth it except as a joke, something I'm sure lots of other people did too.

But combined with the insane browser expectation of being able run unsigned JS and such from anywhere, you could probably host an entire simple text forum on whatever public chain as long as no one cares about it being fast.

Direct API is nice but any block chain explorer service would work in a pinch.

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#68

Post by gumby »

dmoy wrote: post #46
gumby wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we should poison this vector (and IPFS) by uploading copyrighted movie torrents to this free storage system. For a change we’d be doing good.

Shoot don't even need a movie, just a picture of Mickey Mouse

At least there would be no way to take down the torrents…

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#69

Post by Tokumei-no-hito »

theamk wrote: post #58
bigyikes wrote: post #38

> The company said all addresses associated with the spread of the malware have been blacklisted How does this work? Can a single entity really just blacklist certain addresses? How is this decentralized?

Browsers cannot talk to blockchain directly, they need to go through some HTTPS server... And that server can block any request. I am kinda surprised you haven't heard about this already. This has been used in the past to take down NFTs [0] and to make Bitcoins unspendable [1] It's the famous "on chain only" caveat: all the decentralized systems are only decentralized in the ideal world, if nothing except the chain e…

to be clear the caveat has a caveat - the centralized control you're talking about is through public (privately hosted) APIs. anyone running a node on the chain can still send and receive whatever they want. unless the majority of the chain chooses to black list addresses, then you have a hard fork because the nodes don't have a consensus on the protocol (open vs black listing).

Re: The fake browser update scam gets a makeover

#70

Post by username135 »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #63
7moritz7 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think Monero in particular deserves way more criticism for their practice. Bitcoin is one thing, Monero is created for and marketed towards cybercriminals, you don't need to be a communications expert to get that premise. I haven't seen it used once for any legitimate purpose. Atleast with Bitcoin and Ethereum you can get buy some legitimate things like VPNs or NFTs https://arstechnica.com/information-techno…

You could say exactly the same thing about any form of encryption. I haven't bought much with Monero, but I always offer it because I adore the premise. I personally think its great, one of the few truly valuable cryptocurrencies.

+1 for Monero.
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